Anthropology: We're Not Your Indians Anymore

For this work on paper, the contemporary Native American artist Wanbli Koyake has adopted the traditional Plains pictographic style, originally developed for painting animal hides. The scene features a group of Native people on horseback wearing traditional Indigenous dress and regalia. Riders are identified by traditional name glyphs (symbols) in place of their English-language names. They and their steeds knock down and trample people on foot—academics, teachers, and scientists—who hold books relating to their study of Native American people. As the horses overtake them, those on foot shout English names of Native tribes. While visiting the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, known for its extensive ethnographic collections, Koyake requested a copy of the museum’s cultural terms list, which matches the Euro-American names for Native American tribes with the names the tribes call themselves. Koyake literally drew upon the printed document to create this artwork.